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Military


Operation Allied Force

Chronology of Events

  • March 24 -- NATO launches air campaign, with the goal of crippling the Serbian war machine in Kosovo and enforcing compliance with the international peace plan drawn up at Rambouillet, France.
  • March 26 -- The first of a massive tide of refugees arrive in Albania.
  • March 27 -- A US F-117 Nighthawk Stealth fighter is lost near Belgrade but the pilot is recovered.
  • March 31 -- Three US soldiers are snatched by Serb forces after an incident on the Macedonian border.
  • April 1 -- Moderate Kosovar leader Ibrahim Rugova is shown on Serb television talking with Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.
  • April 13 -- Yugoslav forces mount a cross-border attack on a village in northern Albania.
  • April 14 -- Yugoslavia claims that rockets fired by allied jets killed 75 people in two separate refugee columns. NATO later admits accidentally hitting a civilian vehicle.
  • April 20 -- Russian President Boris Yeltsin says Moscow "cannot break with leading world powers" over Kosovo.
  • April 21 -- Two NATO missiles smash into the headquarters of Yugoslavia's ruling Socialist Party.
  • April 23 -- NATO bombs the headquarters of Serbian state television. NATO leaders in Washington rebuff as inadequate an offer by Milosevic to accept an "international presence" in Kosovo.
  • April 28 -- Yugoslav Deputy Prime Minister Vuk Draskovic is dismissed after he accuses the country's rulers of "lying to the people."
  • May 1 -- Forty-seven bus passengers are killed when NATO bombs a bridge in Kosovo.
  • May 2 -- Three captured US soldiers are released into the custody of US civil rights leader Jesse Jackson.
  • May 5 -- NATO suffers its first losses when the two-man crew of a US Apache attack helicopter die in a crash in Albania. Rugova is released by the Yugoslav authorities and flies to Rome.
  • May 6 -- Foreign ministers from the Group of Eight (G8) agree on a framework for a peace plan which calls for the return of all refugees and the deployment of an international "security" force in Kosovo.
  • May 8 -- The Chinese embassy in Belgrade is hit by NATO missiles which kill three people. NATO describes the bombing as a "tragic mistake" caused by "faulty information."
  • May 10 -- Yugoslavia begins proceedings before the UN International Court of Justice in the Hague, accusing NATO of genocide. Belgrade says it has begun pulling troops out of Kosovo.
  • May 13 -- NATO dismisses as insignificant a reported pullout by 250 Yugoslav troops.
  • May 14 -- At least 79 people are killed and 58 wounded when NATO missiles hit Korisa, a village in southern Kosovo.
  • May 19 -- Milosevic and Russia's Balkans envoy Viktor Chernomyrdin back a settlement of the Kosovo conflict within the framework of the United Nations.
  • May 21 -- Russia says mediation efforts with the West are deadlocked. A NATO bomb kills 10 inmates in a Pristina jail.
  • May 22 -- A UN humanitarian mission visits Kosovo, as NATO admits bombing a position held by the KLA.
  • May 23 -- Fighting flares on border between Serb forces and Albanian police. President Bill Clinton says he no longer rules out "other military options".
  • May 26 -- NATO agrees to boost the number of troops in a future Kosovo peacekeeping mission from 28,000 to 45,000.
  • May 27 -- Milosevic and four other top officials are indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague.
  • May 29 -- Yugoslavia says it has accepted the Group of Eight principles for a peace deal in Kosovo.
  • May 30 -- NATO says it wants a clear, personal statement from Milosevic that he accepts alliance conditions before it will halt air raids. A German soldier dies when a tank crashes off a bridge in Albania.
  • May 31 -- At least 20 people are killed at a sanatorium at Surdulica, southern Serbia. NATO denies that its missles are responsible.
  • June 1 -- Belgrade says in a letter to Bonn that it "has accepted the G8 principles." European, US and Russian envoys meet in Bonn to hammer out a common policy for a peace mission to Belgrade.
  • June 2 -- The International Court of Justice rejects Yugoslavia's petition to order an end to NATO airstrikes. EU and Russian envoys travel to Belgrade for talks with Milosevic and hand him a peace plan worked out in Bonn with US Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott.
  • June 3 -- Talks in Belgrade resume for a second session. A Russian spokesman in Moscow says Yugoslavia viewed the peace plan as a "realistic" way out of the Kosovo crisis.
  • June 9 -- NATO and Yugoslav military authorities sign an agreement on the withdrawal of Yugoslav security forces from Kosovo.
  • June 10 -- NATO suspends air strikes.



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